Minna Schmidt and Costumology - An American Success Story

Tucked in amongst the shelves in the Glessner library is a book entitled 400 Outstanding Women of the World and Costumology of Their Time, written and published by Minna M. Schmidt in 1933. The book was prepared to accompany an exhibition of 400 figurines of important women from nearly four dozen countries, which were crafted by Schmidt and displayed at the Century of Progress World’s Fair in Chicago. In honor of Women’s History Month, we share this rags-to-riches story of a German immigrant who came to Chicago in 1886 and turned her passion and talent for costuming into a million-dollar business.

Schmidt through the years - 1886, 1893, 1920, 1924, 1930, and 1933

German origins
Wilhelmine Friederike Moscherosch (always known as Minna) was born on March 17, 1866, in the town of Sindelfingen, located in southern Germany near Stuttgart. She was the eldest of 17 children and from a young age helped her mother care for her younger siblings and their modest home. This left little free time for Minna, but at the age of five she became interested in costuming, carrying on a tradition established by generations of her ancestors who had been involved in the making of clothes.

An October 23, 1927 article in the Chicago Tribune recounted her oft-told story of making her first costumes:
“It was in this little hamlet in Germany that a kindergarten teacher told her pupils the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Minna hurried home and made a miniature Snow White. Then she went to her mother, begging for Seven Dwarfs. But her mother reminded her that there was plenty of work to be done, younger brothers and sisters to care for, and that nobody but a foolish dreamer would cry for seven little dwarfs.

“The child’s grandmother saw the tears. Then the old woman got seven small potatoes; they were for the bodies. Some sticks made good legs. You couldn’t beat a nicely carved chestnut for a head, and a bit of gray wool made excellent hair and beard. Minna went back to kindergarten with her Snow White and her Seven Dwarfs and gave the first of her long series of costume pageants.”

Formal schooling ended at the age of 14 when she “ventured out into the high school of life” travelling to Stuttgart and Frankfort to take jobs as nursemaid and governess. During her little bit of free time, she took advantage of being in large cities, visiting libraries, art museums, stage productions, and carnivals. She enrolled in sewing classes, so that she could earn extra money by taking in seamstress work, and also took classes in dance and physical training to hone additional skills.

At the age of 20, she decided to emigrate to the United States, after reading an ad in a local paper which read “Wanted: a healthy young girl who can teach two boys the German language, wait on an invalid lady (85 years old), do the sewing for the family; Wages, $3.00 a week.” She had carefully saved enough money to provide her own passage in steerage, and her grandmother gave her a $5.00 gold piece, noting it was an investment in her future. The beloved grandmother shared words of wisdom Minna never forgot, “Your square hands are beautiful, because they can make things, and you can accomplish whatever you wish if your head and heart are right and hands are willing.” She also reminded Minna that “You have a right to be happy, but you must earn it.”

Early Years in Chicago

In December 1886, Minna arrived at Castle Garden (the immigrant processing facility in New York City prior to the opening of Ellis Island in 1892), and immediately continued on to Chicago to begin her work with the family that had placed the ad. She studied English, took in sewing work, and did everything she could to advance herself. The next year, her childhood sweetheart, Julius Schmidt, came to Chicago and they were married in October. Two sons, Edwin and Helmut, were born over the next several years.

The World’s Columbian Exposition, held in 1893, was a place of wonder for Minna and it “stimulated the girl from Sindelfingen to want to fashion curious, fantastic, beautiful things.” She was captivated by the exhibits, especially those in the Women’s Building, and it renewed her interest in costume and design. The financial depression that started that year impacted her husband’s business, and Minna found herself needing to return to work. She opened the Locust Studio in Chicago’s German community on the north side, where she taught dance, translated German folk tales, and coordinated productions for schools and clubs. Costume rental was expensive, so she utilized her sewing skills to start making the costumes herself in a small attic shop measuring just eight by ten feet in a building at Wells Street and North Avenue. Soon, the demand was so great that she turned over management of the Studio to others, so that she could focus solely on costume making, which expanded from school plays to society costume balls. She rented increasingly larger spaces and in 1905 bought her first building. 

Business Expands

In 1915, with business continuing to grow, Schmidt purchased a lot at 920 N. Clark Street (at the northwest corner of Clark and Locust streets), immediately west of Washington Square Park and just south of the Newberry Library. She hired German-born architect Paul Gerhardt to design a two-story brick and terra cotta building in the Classical style to serve as both business and home. (Gerhardt had just finished his work on Cook County Hospital and would go on to design a number of prominent Chicago high schools, including Lane Tech). She specifically chose a corner lot as it provided ample street frontage, her shop windows filled with seasonal costumes to lure potential customers inside.

“I erected the first building in the country appropriate for, and wholly devoted to, the costume business, with plenty of space, disinfecting cases, the latest time-saving motor machines, and with one hundred fifty feet of parking space on a side street for customers with automobiles.”

An August 1937 article in the Chicago Tribune, entitled “A House of Magic for a World of Make-Believe” captures the experience of stepping inside:
“From the outside it looks like an ordinary two-story building. From the inside it looks like a mixture of a doll’s palace, King Tut’s tomb, a bandana factory, and the ladies’ dressing room in the Savoy Royal hotel of Baghdad during carnival week. Such is a visitor’s first impression of Schmidt’s costume and wig shop. This extraordinary place is at once factory, apartment house, experimental laboratory, museum, warehouse, display room, dressmaker’s shop, and retail store. It was the first building in the United States built especially for a costume business.

“Just inside the entrance are showcases full of magnificent costumes of Indians, costumes of Chinese princesses, suits of armor, gayly colored masks, and wigs. And there is one big case full of the most exquisitely dressed figurines you ever saw, representing famous women of the world during 3,000 years of changing modes of dress. In the rear are large storerooms with shelves rising twenty feet high containing boxes of costumes fit to clothe anybody from Hannibal’s mess sergeant to a green-eyed goblin out of the Red Fairy Book. Nearby is an ironing room, and beside that the factory sewing room, where six power-driven sewing machines daily hum over new getups for women who want to look like Marie Antoinette or for little boys who want to play alligator.”

By the time the new store opened in 1915, her family was fully immersed in the business, providing Schmidt with more time for researching costumes to ensure their accuracy. She embarked on numerous trips to Europe, Egypt, and the Middle East to view museum collections and acquire historic costumes. Husband Julius became bookkeeper, secretary, and administrator; son Edwin specialized in Shakespearean plays; and Helmut, a talented sculptor, headed the art and rental departments. Long-time employee Emily Lundgren, who later married Schmidt’s nephew, was in charge of wigs and headgear.

The 1920s were an extraordinarily successful period for Schmidt. She had 20 employees working for what was now a million-dollar business, renting more than 60,000 costumes per year. A 1953 Tribune article noted that “For decades, Minna’s merchandise was the life of every costume ball . . . She still can tell you what each big Chicago name wore to what costume ball 40 years ago.” She organized the Costumer’s Association of Chicago in 1921. Four years later she purchased an 18-room mansion at 2715 N. Sheridan Road in Evanston for $90,000 (the equivalent of $1.5 million today), although she noted that she really preferred to spend time in the little apartment on Clark Street over her costume shop. 

Law Degree
Schmidt had a long-standing interest in law, extending back to her days in Germany. In 1920, at the age of 54, she enrolled in the Chicago-Kent College of Law, after taking a required 18 months of classes in high school work, to compensate for her German education ending at the age of 14. She devoted five nights a week plus Sundays for four years and graduated with her Bachelor of Law degree in April 1924, noting her motivation:

“I merely took the course in law to improve my mind and make me fit for the many things I plan to do in the future. When I use my knowledge of law it will be in doing simple helpful things for the good of humanity.”

In 1929, she received her Master of Law degree from Kent. Her thesis, “Ancient Laws and Customs and the Evolution of the Status of Women,” carried forward her long-standing interest in women’s history and came at the end of the decade that saw significant advances for women, including the passage of the 19^th Amendment guaranteeing all women the right to vote.

Teaching
Schmidt’s extensive study and travels provided her with a vast knowledge of the history of costume, complimented by her substantial library, regarded as one of the largest to ever be compiled on the subject. Utilizing these assets, she opened the Chicago Schmidt College of Scientific Costuming in April 1927 in her Clark Street building. Schmidt gave lectures on period costume, and other members of the family and staff provided instruction on hair styles, headdress, and makeup. During the course of study, each student would be required to construct a historically accurate costume for one of the 16-inch figurines.

Display created for Schmidt's lecture on jewels

Her work in professionalizing the field was recognized by the University of Chicago in 1929 as noted in 400 Outstanding Women:
“The practical lore of costume construction and makeup for the theater has been dignified at the University of Chicago by inclusion in the regular curriculum. The first university laboratory and workshop in the country, for the study and creation of historic and stage costumes, opened October 1, 1929. Its purpose in part is the training of university students for professional costuming work.”

Every period of costumes was covered in the curriculum starting with Egyptian, Assyrian, Grecian, and Roman,continuing through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and then finishing with the twentieth century. Laboratory work including the designing, cutting, construction, and fitting of life-size costumes. Elaborate pageants were planned and executed to train on how to stage an event and work within a budget, with every pageant designed to “bring out the woman’s side of the story and make it visual, colorful, splendid.” A museum containing more than 1,000 costumes, 400 wigs, and many accessories, along with Schmidt’s considerable library, were fully available to students for study.

She also taught at Northwestern University for several years, and it was in December 1936 that she was honored for her 50 years of service as a costumer, which  coincided with the 50^th anniversary of her arrival in Chicago from Germany. During the tribute held at Thorne Hall on the McKinlock campus, attended by several hundred people, University president Walter Dill Scott praised her as “scholar, artist, lawyer, historian and costumologist.” 

Figurines
Schmidt’s interest in the history of costume led to her desire to create historically correct figurines of women throughout history, honoring those women and showing the development of costume over thousands of years. The figurines, made by her son Helmut, a talented sculptor, were one-quarter the size of an average woman. He would initially model the figurine out of clay from which a plaster mold was made; wax was poured into the mold to create the final figurine. Hair was added while the wax was still warm, and then the face was sculpted and finished with oil paints. Each costume was extensively researched and crafted by Schmidt, “authentic down to the tiniest ruffle of the bustle.” In a 1956 interview, she stressed the serious, scholarly purpose of the figurines and insisted, “Do not call them dolls – dolls are meant to be played with.” The first series of figurines, 3000 Years of Fashion, consisted of 120 historical figures beginning with Eve, who Schmidt referred to as “a somewhat careless dressmaker, using leaves for garments and thorns for pins,” and ending with a 1920s “flapper.”

For her second series, Schmidt wished to honor significant women in her adopted home of Chicago. She asked the staff of the Chicago Historical Society (now the Chicago History Museum) to select the women, but a problem arose when it was discovered that there was a lack of portraits and information on many of them. Working with the Society staff, descendants were located to provide biographies, photographs or paintings, and even clothing or swatches of fabrics the women wore. The Figurines of Historic Chicago Women series, consisting of 72 figures, was officially presented to the Society on March 23, 1924. 

The third series honored important women in Illinois history and consisted of 129 figures, donated to the Illinois State Historical Library in 1929 (and later transferred to the Illinois State Museum). The image below shows three figurines from that collection (left to right): philanthropist and socialite Harriet Sanger Pullman (a Prairie Avenue neighbor of the Glessners), First Lady Julia Dent Grant, and Elizabeth Byerly Bragdon, an Evanston-based patron of music and the arts.

400 Outstanding Women
Schmidt’s largest figurine project was planned for the Century of Progress World’s Fair in Chicago in 1933. When asked a few years earlier about whether she was planning to exhibit any of her figurines at the Fair, she replied:

“I have one great ambition for the 1933 Fair . . . It is something I have longed to do for years. I want to visit or get into communication with all the nations of the world and find out from each one the names of the four or five women who have done the most for their country. I want all the information I can get about these women, and then I shall make figurines to represent them. When I have finished the figurines and dressed them appropriately, I shall exhibit them at the Fair. I want them to be so realistic that they will attract the interest of everyone. They will show what women have done for the race, from the dawn of civilization to our modern times, and they will, I believe, create and foster a friendly feeling among the people of the various nations.”

She followed through on her plan, consulting with Embassies in Washington, D.C. and Consulates in Chicago to assemble a collection of 400 figurines representing more than 40 nations with a concentration from Europe, North and South America, and Australia, with a smaller representation from Asia and Africa. The figurines were displayed in the second-floor rotunda of the General Exhibits Building. Schmidt wrote and published the accompanying book, which included short biographies of all 400 women, several of her lectures, and a detailed history of her own career in costuming.

In the introduction to the book, Schmidt noted:
“It was recommended that the characters be selected from different stations of life, that no living person was to be included, and that they should be judged and chosen for their merit and for the influence for good on their community or country. In the group of miniature women is combined beauty, patriotism, good fellowship, and other qualities as they are reflected in art, religion, commerce, education and science of the world’s history. The records of these chosen ones prove the following assertion. During the past century the status of women in law, politics, economics, and in education, as well as in social life, has made greater strides than in the preceding five thousand years.”

A selection from the "400 Outstanding Women" recently sold at auction

A total of 32 women were selected to represent the United States. Of these, 27 were selected by Helen Dawes, the Official Hostess and Chairman of the Social Committee for the Century of Progress (and wife of the Fair president, Rufus Dawes). The other five, who were all women of color, were selected by Elizabeth Lindsay Davis, an important African-American teacher and activist of the time who was responsible for forming the Phyllis Wheatley Home Association in Chicago to provide housing and services for African-American women excluded from the YWCA.

Among the American women included in the exhibition and book were Pocahantas, Sakakawea, Priscilla Alden, Mary Ball Washington (mother of George), Abigail Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Mary Cassatt, and Nancy Elliot Edison (mother of Thomas). Chicagoans represented included Myra Bradwell (the first woman admitted to the Illinois Bar Association), Frances Willard (president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union), Bertha Honoré Palmer (President of the Board of Lady Managers of the Columbian Exposition), Sarah Hackett Stevenson (first female member of the American Medical Association), and Alice Freeman Palmer (first dean of women at the University of Chicago). 

Figurines representing Ireland, Norway, Cuba, Bulgaria, and African-Americans

African-Americans included Phyllis Wheatley (first African-American author of a published book of poetry – in 1773), Sojourner Truth (abolitionist and women’s rights activist), Margaret Murray Washington (wife of Booker T. Washington and the principal of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute), Amanda Smith (evangelist and the first woman to preach in India), and Ariel Serena Hedges Bowen (Professor of Music at Clark University in Atlanta).

After the Fair closed in 1934, the 400 figurines were donated to Trinity College in Washington, D.C. (now Trinity Washington University), the nation’s first Catholic liberal arts college for women, founded in 1897.

Later Years
Over the years, Schmidt educated seventeen of her relatives – brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews – bringing many of them to the United States. Always mindful of her German heritage, she supported several charities back home and funded construction of Wilhelminenheim, a hospital for women and children in Sindelfingen (shown below).

Ill health necessitated her retirement in the early 1940s. Shortly after the death of Julius, her husband of 63 years, in 1950, she donated her Evanston home to Northwestern University and moved into the Holy Family convent at 1444 W. Division Street. The Minna Schmidt Figurine Room contained hundreds of her figurines which, after a priest inquired as to why they were all women, grew to include prominent men ranging from Eric the Red and George Washington, to Richard Wagner and Charles Lindbergh. One of her final series included all of the First Ladies through Mamie Eisenhower.

In the last few years of her life, she resided at St. Mary’s Hospital, where she died on December 8, 1961, at the age of 95. She was interred beside her husband in Wunder’s Cemetery.

Minna Schmidt’s story is one of inspiration – a young immigrant arriving in a new country, barely speaking English, with only $5.00 in her pocket, but a powerful ambition. She utilized her skills to establish herself as a leading businesswoman in Chicago, an authority on costuming in the United States, and the leader in establishing costume design as a subject taught at leading universities.

NOTES
The 400 Outstanding Women book in the Glessner library did not belong to the Glessners. Frances Glessner died in 1932, and there is no evidence that the 90-year-old John Glessner attended the Fair. It is likely that the book was purchased by Frances Glessner Lee, who would have been interested in how the figurines were created and dressed, given her previous work creating the miniature symphony orchestra, and her later work on the famous Nutshell Studies.

The building that housed Schmidt’s Costume Shop at 920 N. Clark Street was demolished in the late 1980s and replaced by a townhouse development; that block of Locust Street has been renamed Delaware Place. Her Sheridan Road home in Evanston, donated to Northwestern University, was also demolished and replaced by a new home in 1980. 

The figurines of the 400 outstanding women were deaccessioned from the collection of Trinity College and individual figurines and groupings occasionally come up for sale. The collection of figurines depicting prominent Illinois women remains intact in the Illinois State Museum.